and turns me to gold in the sunlight
by bellmare
Summary: so this is how her world ends, after countless sweeps of conquest. —Her Imperious Condescension, Feferi, the Handmaid.


The spectators come early to the execution, trickling into the rocky outcrop in ragged groups. The smell of salt hangs heavy in the air. Everything is as it was, as it should be—Alternia's twin moons continue to exert their endless pull on the tides; the surf continues to lap ceaselessly at the shore, the deepest trenches of the oceans remain as fathomless and impenetrable as ever.

Today marks the end of an era, the destruction of a cycle and the birth of a new one.

The Empress holds her head high as she is led through the crowds, not meeting the eyes which turn instinctively to her as though she is the sun and they are the planets which orbit her.

She smiles, a thin, fishhook curve, brittle as the shells which splinter under her feet. It's only natural.

For the first time, seadwellers and landwellers alike congregate to watch the death of the old empire, the dissolution of the old ways. Lowly rustbloods dot the shore; beyond, rising like islands birthed from shifting undersea plates, purplebloods astride their great lusii watch in silence, dry gills flicking in the salt breeze.

She feels the soft breath of a psionic over her shoulder – the very same who helped facilitate her fall. She will not turn to meet the eyes of lowblooded swill, a glorified peasant who travelled across time to destroy everything she worked so hard to build from the rubble of civilisations past. She will keep her silence, even as the demoness's power tingles, cold and electric, against her bound wrists.

They're not so different, the two of them—they have both left behind them a trail of blood and destruction; both have bore the passing of innumerable sweeps, both have lived to watch empires rise and fall beneath their power, both were feared for all they had wrought upon even the furthest reaches of space. They could almost be sisters now, in their simple shifts of green and blue.

Almost.

The one who unseated her steps aside as her convoy of threshecutioners escort her to the ceremonial stakes which jut from the ground like the horns crowning her head, erected as a final tribute to a condemned liege. Her lip curls. She needs no such pity when she stands before an audience of her own erstwhile courtiers.

She will die exactly how she lived – as a warrior queen, a tyrant empress, a merciless goddess—one struck down by the capricious hand of fate, felled by the fry who looks at her with such regret in her eyes.

An Empress will not survive long on the throne if she constantly doubts herself and can only look backwards, but never to the future.

Her escorts are half reverent as she steps fearlessly over the plinth and presses her back against the cold metal forming the central bridge of her sigil, allowing herself to be bound. She will face her end with the same pride as when she smothered a revolution and crushed the hopes of a tiny rebellion; she will not falter, she will not allow herself to prostrate herself before her subjects.

The metal of her shackles are cold against her ankles and wrists. As the threshecutioners bind her in place, she sees only dull gray metal—the symbol of the Signless, encircling their throats.

For the first time, they dare to plainly show her their affiliation as badges of pride and defiance. So be it.

One of the fry's comrades steps forward—a mere child herself. Neophyte Pyrope is the spitting image of her ancestor, down to the fiery glow of her seared scleras. She wears no smile on her face, no mocking merriment softening the set of her jaw. Mirroring her advance is the mustardblood, the descendant of her own beloved Helmsman.

"Day of wrath," Pyrope begins, voice carrying easily over the silence. "Day of mourning. See fulfilled, the blind prophets' warning."

It has been sweeps since she's heard the ceremonial words, when it was she herself watching her predecessor's demise. The early dawn chill dissipates; the air warms. The watchers shift with unease. Despite herself, a tremor runs down her spine; ice curdles in her veins.

This is how her world ends—_will end_.

This time, the other seer, the one with the Helmsman's blood, speaks. His pronunciation is slow and deliberate, overly careful to avoid the remnants of his hissing lisp. "From the dust of earth returns a queen for judgement."

Water laps quietly at the shore. She lifts her face to meet the sun.

* * *

><p>The demoness stays with her as the rest of the onlookers disperse. Whether it is out of sympathy or malicious glee, the empress is unsure.<p>

"Do you fear death?"

Her eyes flick open at the sound of the other's voice, harsh and cold as broken glass. The Condesce laughs, a jagged splinter of sound in the silence.

"I have seen enough to know the feel of it against my very being. I have no fear of what I once commandeered."

"Admirable."

The handmaid circles her, weaving a path through the sand. In a different world, she could have been Empress, with her cool eyes and proud, spiralling horns, her psionics and eldritch magic.

"Do you feel regret?"

She can feel her skin peeling and blistering, can feel the angry, heated tyrian flush rising to the surface. It's hard to breathe—the noonday air is dry, the salt in the wind stings her chapped and flaking gills. She has no more energy to expend on mirthless humour or childish questions.

"Strange of you to be asking me that, Demoness. Do _you_?"

Eyes which spark and flash with power meet her own. The handmaid chuckles, short and sharp as the wands she spins idly between her fingers. "Sometimes. Perhaps."

* * *

><p>On the next dawn, the queenling approaches, footfalls soft and measured against the warming sand. The empress stirs, meeting the gaze of her successor. She smiles.<p>

"To what do I owe this late pleasure, majesty?"

Her visitor gazes steadily at her. She remains unadorned by the finery of her office, instead wearing the same simple garb she's always worn.

"I came to talk."

"I see. Before anything else—let me ask you but one thing."

Her descendant nods, face pale in the half-light. "I owe you at least that much."

"Someone asked me … if I feared death. What I said to her is unimportant. What I want to know is this. Do _you_ fear the ending of your life?"

The queenling is silent, so long that the Condesce is sure she won't answer. Then—

"No," she says. "I don't."

"Brave words for a young one."

"I died once before," she replies quietly, and touches her chest, fingers hovering over where her heart would be. "I'm not afraid to face it again."

Pride stirs in the recesses of her mind. There is more to Feferi Peixes than she ever imagined—she is more than merely a vapid child, despite her unrealistic ideals.

"You realise that the mere fact that we are here only serves to underline the irrefutable proof that the old ways still take precedence over whatever you envision. One day, you will be the one bound to your own emblem, waiting for the end."

"With the death of the old empress, the old empire crumbles," the heiress says shortly. "Believe what you may, but someday, I will change the world."

* * *

><p>When she moves, she can feel her skin splitting like the peel of an overripe fruit. Her blood feels hot as it trails down her arms, salty as she laps absently at her cracked lips.<p>

The metal heats beneath her flesh. She can feel herself burning, can feel the fire which bites at every inch of exposed skin. She almost wants to laugh—it's almost like she's reliving the Sufferer's execution, down to the agonising heat which brands her manacled wrists.

Her hands are jags of bone wrapped in a rind of flesh. She's lost count of the number of days she's waited for her consciousness to fade—immortality does not release her quickly after millennia of having her in its grip.

* * *

><p>When she feels the darkness eating away at the edges of her vision, she knows it's time.<p>

Her voice is a sandpaper rasp as she speaks, soft and barely audible even to her own ears. "Children of Alternia."

Despite her state, their attention is drawn to her, as moths are to a flame. "Children of Alternia … you have no hope of establishing a new hierarchy, one without violence and bloodshed."

Her gaze travels to the mutant one, the Sufferer's reflection. "Your ancestor died in vain, little guppy, because he could not face the truth of our kind. Forsake your ideals—" At this, her stare shifts to her descendant, the cloistered princess with too much hope in her heart. "For they will get you nowhere. Attempting to pursue them will bring you nothing but despair and heartbreak."

The witch of life, the would-be empress, her resolve is exhilarating and plain to see. The Condesce admires this in her as she draws herself up to her full height. "I will abolish the rules you brought about, and pave the way to a future different from the one you created."

"An exercise in futility," the empress hisses. "Without the constraints of the haemospectrum and the caste system, you are no more a queen than the mustardblooded helmsman's successor is king. Your own empire will turn upon you and tear you apart, even as you preach your naïveté to them. Not even your lusus will be able to protect you then. Is that what you really desire? Do you embrace your own destruction so readily, daughter of my daughters?"

Beside her, the Orphaner's scion snarls. "We will not allow that," he bites out, but his expressions shifts when she turns to look at him. "We will succeed. _Fef_ will succeed."

"Such grand aspirations from such insignificant trout. So sweet it will certainly be, then, when you go to your graves dreading the monsters you have created of your own people."

She is fading. Endless centuries of life are no longer hers to enjoy. She can hear Gl'bgolyb's singing in her ears, the funerary chant for a fallen sovereign.

* * *

><p>At dusk, the masses return. Tradition is still to be followed, no matter how barbaric, how abhorrent. An heir apparent has to cement her place lest her empire revolts.<p>

Feferi draws to a halt before the burnished gold contours of her symbol, the execution mast of an ancient monarch. Even when she tiptoes, it is almost impossible to reach the Condesce, to be able to curl her fingers around her ancestor's arching horns and daub the empress's spilt blood on her heart and forehead, to be able to do the same with her own tyrian to the dead queen.

With the eyes of her entire court on her, she bows, once, a mark of respect for the fallen. When she straightens, her expression is unreadable; she reaches forward, tracing the hard, ridged curves of her ancestor's horns and then wrenches, breaking them with a snap which seems to echo in the bones of every troll present. The sound whips through the air with a crack like the thunder which roars through the skies; those once in her service avert their eyes.

Behind her, Eridan's voice rises, joined by those of her friends in a murmured hush which transmutes to a trembling crescendo. "The Condesce is dead. Long live the Empress."


End file.
